In my humble subjective opinion, Dr Grossman’s experience and account of online sexism and misogyny provides the most comprehensive and definitive evidence currently available that some people genuinely do exaggerate their experience of online abuse.

This is not to say that Dr Grossman is definitively guilty of conscious exaggeration herself but if Yvette Cooper and Stella Creasy have considered this incident in any reasonable level of detail then they should be ashamed of themselves for the disservice they do to genuine victims of online sexism by giving this incident so much prominence.

Hostile: Showing or feeling opposition or dislike; unfriendly (e.g. people are very hostile to the idea).

EYEdo believe it is fair to say that Dr Grossman did receive many hostile tweets in the immediate aftermath of her Sky News debate.

The first was commissioned by the journalist she debated on SKY News, in part because he was troubled by the potential “guilt by association” reputational damage that Grossman’s claims could potentially deliver to his doorstep.

It seemed highly unlikely to me that someone as distinguished as Grossman would simply concoct allegations for sympathy on social media because she felt unhappy about the way the debate had gone. I messaged Grossman, asking her for examples of misogynistic tweets so I could name and shame the perpetrators. She declined to provide any.

Remarkably, and (again) in my humble subjective opinion, despite their eyebrow raising claims, the latter two studies actually present plenty of evidence to support the conclusion established by the first and the suggestion from various tweeters that Grossman was mostly conflating fair criticism with unreasonable (and possibly even illegal) abuse.

@DrEmilyGrossman Hello Emily! What made you not want to continue your academic career in genetics/cellbiology, you are an inspiration!

Emily’s personal mantra is to ‘say yes, panic later‘, which may go some way to explain why she agreed to go on live television and condemn a noble laureate and (arguably) fellow cancer research scientist without even knowing the exceedingly dodgy facts of the matter available at the point that she entered stage left.

Of course the truth of the Tim Hunt Kerfuffle is a whole other sad, sorry story about how by the summer of 2015 the media were depressingly tightly primed to spring at any sexism in science story, no matter how extraordinary and unlikely it might be.

Dr Grossman is on record admitting that she didn’t have time to do any research before her appearance and that when she went on air she didn’t know if Tim Hunt’s comments were meant to be a joke or not.

Even so, she ‘liked’ the above tweet before going on air which EYEguess says something about something.

And no matter what you think of her debating partner’s unique style, it’s hard to argue that it wasn’t a devastatingly bad performance from Grossman.

Remarkably, during the debate she even actually did the thing that Tim Hunt had been widely reported as doing (even though he didn’t) when she started arguing that, in her experience, women preform better in segregated environments.

Different people will have different offence thresholds and EYEaccept that some comments in Grossman’s twitter timeline could reasonably be perceived by some as misogynistic or sexist.

The most overt example I spotted was one comment where the tweeter stated he’d never tire of ‘slapping her with [his] cock’, but based on her own evidence, Grossman’s claims about ‘a barrage of misogynistic abuse’ are stunningly wide of the mark.

It is worth mentioning that there were plenty of disobliging comments in her feed about her gentleman opponent. Yianopolous was described as (amongst other things) a complete wazzock, utter nob, pathetic excuse of a man, giant inflated prick and one person even wanted to throttle him after 10 seconds [of watching].

Interestingly while her presentation to an exclusively feminist audience suggests Grossman has an extremely low offence threshold in general, she still manages to find it hilarious when someone suggests that the next time she debates Yianopolous she should just ‘bring a gun‘.

By way of comparison here’s a sample of ‘sexist and misogynistic’ comments aimed at Grossman, as categorised according to the type of misogynist trope she perceived to be used.

Aggressive & Humiliating Language: She looked like a bull dog that had just licked piss off a nettle.

@DrEmilyGrossman@SkyNews What a surprise, feminist is humiliated on live tv and then plays the misogynist card for sympathy.

Women being weak or pathetic for showing emotions or lacking in confidence:Women want to compete but they don’t know what that word actually means she wants special emotional accommodation for woman, she’s a doctor who got mocked by a journalist in a simple debate.

Teaching and communication (feminine) are inferior to real scientists:No wonder she became a teacher rather than an actual scientist. Let me guess she teaches playschool students, she must do because a journalist knew more about her own profession than she did.

Feminist Scholar Christina Hoff Summers very wisely acknowledges that ‘political correctness’ has it’s place in society and can be an important way of flagging up expressions that we don’t realize can be genuinely hurtful to some people with backgrounds or beliefs that are different to our own.

She goes on to caution that while ‘political correctness’ can be about etiquette and politeness, increasingly it can also be weaponized in an effort to impose a political agenda on others by shutting down dissent or debate.

Hoff Summers is a veteran of the feminist movement that came to prominence in the 1970’s. Ironically, the tough battles that her generation had to fight (and largely win) have in part inevitably led to to the type of politically correct environment that seems to have resulted in Oxbridge educated women like Grossman who appear to genuinely believe that it’s acceptable to brand people sexist with such certainty simply because they don’t agree with every word they say.

It is perhaps an inevitable or even necessary outcome of the many genuine injustices that women have and sometimes still face but like all phenomenon it will inevitably run it’s course.

And one day Dr Grossman may have to reevaluate her perception and experience of imposter syndrome.

Here's the interview: https://t.co/xAuEmBUPhK If you want to see quite what ignorance women are up against search under my Twitter handle..

Share this:

Like this:

Related

About the author

EYEisBloke is an equality champion who blogs about a phenomenon called 'the Glass Blind Spot' - which is where someone consciously or unconsciously ignores information relevant to a discussion about equality and social justice because it would undermine or distract from their preferred narrative.